Despite these developments, including private networks using dedicated spectrum locally on their premises, 5G's introduction faces hurdles and challenges, which often relate to the problem of How to (securely) integrate a 5G network into a (existing) manufacturing environment with all its peculiarities?
In order to address the challenges, reference architectures have been published in the literature:
The iira [1]} vertically integrates production technologies in the iiot.
It contains different views with respect to different dimensions:
Functional domains, system characteristics and crosscutting functions;
and explicitly names connectivity as such a crosscutting function. Complementary to the iira, the rami [2]} addresses three different dimensions related to higher-level layers, including communications, the life cycle value stream and hierarchy levels, the latter essentially resembling the automation pyramid. However, existing architectures define only few regarding the integration of operational ot and ict like 5G into an industrial network, for which interdisciplinary joint work from different fields like manufacturing, automation, manufacturing IT, IT security and communication technology is required.
Although there are already promising approaches to use 5G to enable more flexible (and more dynamic) manufacturing processes [3]}, mainly large companies carry out these examples and target large production lines.
Nevertheless, there are still huge differences between sme and large enterprises [4]}, [5]}, specifically regarding new technological approaches.
